The
release for August 2009, called "Patient Zero",
will be the first of three consecutive Sixth
Doctor and Charley
Pollard stories. "Patient Zero" has
been written and directed by Nicholas Briggs. It
was recorded on the 16th and 18th March 2009.

Big
Finish Productions have announced that the end is nigh
for Charley Pollard or is it? The popular Doctor
Who audio companion,
who made her debut eight years ago in "Storm Warning",
looks set to leave the audio adventures in a blaze
of glory in September 2009’s "Blue
Forgotten Planet".

‘Charley
has had an incredible journey with The Doctor’,
executive producer Nicholas Briggs has revealed. ‘She
was saved from certain death in her first story, an
act which compromised the Web of Time, and went on
to travel with the Eighth
Doctor in many adventures.
Their collaboration came to an end in "The
Girl Who Never Was", but Charley was saved by The Doctor
again - albeit an earlier incarnation, in the form
of the Sixth Doctor. That paradox - how she could meet
the Time Lord in his past yet still be unknown to him
in his future - has formed the central mystery for
their recent adventures’.

Her story
comes to a head, however, in August’s "Patient
Zero", which kicks off the ‘Charley finale’ season.
It sees the return of both the Viyrans and the Daleks,
and guest stars Michael Maloney (The Young Victoria,
Bonekickers) as Fratalin and Jess Robinson
(Dead
Ringers)
as Mila.

Sixth Doctor

Is
it really the beginning of the end for Charley? Certainly,
rumour would have it that Charlotte Pollard’s adventures
with the Sixth Doctor are coming to an end in this new
season of audio plays - or as actress India Fisher endearingly
refers to it, ‘The Charley Finale’ - which
begins with this story.

As explained
by Nicholas Briggs ‘We wanted to bring the
Sixth Doctor and Charley adventures to some kind of crescendo.
We couldn’t just have The Doctor continuing to
be suspicious of her, and her being all coy and worried
about The Doctor finding out the truth. But we wanted
to do it in an unexpected way’.

India Fisher

But
this still does not reveal if Charley really is leaving,
or maybe this season’s ‘crescendo’ is
something else entirely. What can be certain is that
something very definite is definitely going to happen
and that Charley really has a hard time in this story.

Of
course having already travelled with The Doctor in his
eighth incarnation - something which Charley has managed
to have kept secret until now – we could not expect
anything less. The Doctor though knows something is amiss
with Charley, but can’t quite put his finger on
it. As India Fisher has explained ‘It’s been
fascinating to play, as Charley has grown up massively
since encountering the Sixth Doctor. She feels the balance
of power has shifted. She holds the cards and supposedly
knows information he doesn’t. Of course, this isn’t
entirely true...’.

On
thing is for certain in this story the lead characters’ relationship
does reach a turning point and as Nicholas Briggs has
stated she does end up giving The Doctor a full explanation. ‘But
not necessarily the one we were expecting. By the end
of the show, The Doctor and Charley’s relationship
seems to be on an entirely new footing. They’re
about to strike out into infinity’.

As
to the villains in this story Nicholas Briggs has stated
that ‘The Daleks were the ideal villains to
be involved in "Patient Zero". They’d
also get the season off to a really exciting start!’ This
story also boasts the debut of a brand new type of Dalek.
As revealed by Nicholas Briggs, ‘It introduces
the Dalek Time Controller who’s a special Dalek,
responsible for plotting Dalek time strategies. He’s
not the usual kind of Dalek, because he kind of understands
that the Daleks can’t just randomly fiddle with
the timeline, because they might end up hurting their
own interests. They’re still as nasty as ever but
they are slightly constrained here, by the concerns voiced
by the Dalek Time Controller. But they are certainly
on course for their biggest victory ever!’.

While "Patient
Zero" is, like all the previous adventures a standalone
story in its own right there will be hints about what’s
to come. ‘There’s a huge amount to listen
out for which will eventually come back to bite everyone
in "Blue Forgotten Planet", the third story
in the season. The three stories do all clearly link
into each other, but they don’t always directly
follow on from each other. They are kind of landmarks
in a bigger story that takes time to develop...’.

Companion
Chronicles

This
release also includes the fifth part of "The
Three Companions" - the 12-part Companion Chronicles
mini-series which are a bonus feature on the monthly Doctor
Who plays since April 2009. Each of the 10-minute
episodes has been written by Marc Platt and has been
directed by Lisa Bowerman.This
special story brings together Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
(aka The
Brigadier) (played by Nicholas Courtney) and Polly (played
by Anneke Wills), who discover that their past travels
with The Doctor share a common link... Meanwhile, Thomas
Brewster (played by John Pickard) is watching from
a distance, and he is now the owner of a stolen TARDIS...

Also
starring in this episode is Russell Floyd.

Episode
Five: "The Brigadier's Story": Polly's tale
is over, but now Lethbridge-Stewart shares his story
of a rare excursion in the TARDIS, when the Third
Doctor
answered a distress call from a distant galaxy. But
what is the secret of Waterloo Station?

Big Finish Magazine
- Vortex: Issue 6 (August 2009)

Vortex: Issue 6

Issue
6 of 'Vortex - The Big Finish Magazine' was also sent out to subscribers with this release.

To
discover the answers, the Doctor must travel back in
time, beyond all known civilizations to the vast, mysterious
Amethyst Viral Containment Station. But answers lie
within the TARDIS too. Someone who has been there a
long, long time...

Meanwhile,
the Daleks have travelled back in time on their own
mission, to bring them the ultimate victory they crave.
But it is a mission so complex and delicate that even
they know they must beware the Web of Time...

Who
is Patient Zero? What has happened to Charley? And
why have the legendary Viyrans been summoned?

On the Inside Cover:

The Viyrans - A Very Short History

The
Viyrans have been lurking around in the audio adventures
of Doctor Who for quite some time, but you probably
didn’t even notice. Their influence was first
felt in Urgent
Calls (on Doctor
Who CD 94: I.D.),
in which the Sixth
Doctor encountered a virus that
made people make significant but random phone calls
to each other. In fact, every time a virus has
been mentioned since that point, the intention
has been for it to be connected with the Viyrans.

Their
first bona fide ‘appearance’ was in Mission
of the Viyrans,
a one-part adventure following the three-part story The
Mind’s Eye (Doctor
Who CD 102). In that story, it was revealed that
the Viyrans were on an intergalactic virus clean-up
mission, following a terrible catastrophe. But
what was the exact nature of that catastrophe? Patient Zero may
shed some light on that.

Writer’s Notes: Nicholas Briggs

‘Oh,
you’ll go mad and die,’ script editor Alan Barnes said to me
when I told him I wanted to write two of the three scripts in what we’d
decided we’d call ‘The Stalker Season’. I think he was
referring to the problems of excessive workload, not my general state of
mental health. And, of course, every day of my life I’m listening
to and giving notes on sound design and music, reading other people’s
scripts as well as formulating and discussing future plans for Doctor
Who and Big Finish’s other ranges... But it can’t all be about
this executive producer nonsense!

Sometimes
I have to get back to what I truly love - and I don’t just mean doing
the trailers or a bit of sound design and music (even though I love those
things too). I mean sometimes I have to write Doctor Who, because in many
ways, that’s my first love. In fact, as if to prove that, I can confirm
that I created, wrote about and drew (cringe!) the Viyrans when I was about
14 years old. The chance to have them battle the Daleks was just too tempting
to miss. I don’t want to tempt fate, but so far... I haven’t
gone mad or died. Phew!

He
has been exploring the universe for hundred of years. He fights injustice. He
defeats evil. He helps people. The Doctor sacrificed his previous life on the
planet Androxani Minor to save his companion Peri from a toxic virus. Now he
is travelling through time and space on his own, driven on by his insatiable
curiosity and adventurous spirit. In this incarnation he is forthright, often
abrasive and can be blunt to the point of rudeness in the face of great danger.
But having answered a distress call emanating from Earth in the year 500,002
and picked up the mysterious Charley Pollard, he now feels its time he learned
just who she is...

Charlotte
Elspeth Pollard (1912 – 1930); born on the day the Titanic sank; died in
the crash of the airship R101. (Or at least, that’s how the Web of Time
has it.) In reality, the self-styled ‘Edwardian Adventuress’ was
whisked away on an incredible journey through time and space in the company of
the Eighth Doctor. The journey ended in 2008, when she walked away into the Singapore
night. (Or at least, that’s how the Doctor remembers it.) In reality, she’d
been washed up on a lonely island in the year 500,002, from where she sent an
SOS out to the TARDIS. But it wasn’t ‘her’ Doctor who answered
her call, and now she has some explaining to do - assuming she gets the chance...